Healthcare Reform



Whoa, Trump wouldn't lie to us, the American public, would he?

And re: Bernie's plan, wasn't there going to be something like a $.05 tax on every stock trade that was going to foot the bill for this and other projects very easily?

 
funhusker said:
Sounds pricey on the surface.  And knowing people will cuss, there would have to be some sort of tax to offset the expense.  But I'm curious how much Americans spend as a whole on private medical coverage.  I'm guess close to that number if not more; I have homework for the day.

Depending on the numbers, my point is that I would rather pay an extra $500 in taxes to receive full coverage for my family versus paying $700 to a private company to hope they cover us.
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Shouldn't be that hard to figure out, round about.  So that article says approximately 3.2 trillion a year for medicare for everyone.  That would eliminate premiums, deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance (you know when you meet the deductible and still have to cover a percentage up to an out of pocket maximum).

But lets forget about co-pays and co-insurance.  In 2016, the average single person payed 321 a month or 3,852 a year and had a deductible of 4,358, so if you actually used your insurance you were out 8,210 out of pocket.  We had a 91.2 % health care coverage in the US in 2016 and a population of 322,179,605, so 293,827,799.76 insured people for at least some of the year.  So if those people used their medical coverage, they'd have payed out approximately 2.412 trillion dollars, before taking into account things like co-pays and co-insurance.  If they never saw a doctor they still shelled out 1.24 trillon, just in premiums.

In 2017 we spent 3.4 trillion total on healthcare according to: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/how-we-spend-3400000000000/530355/

So I guess bottom line for me is you get what you pay for. 

Right now we pay a lot of money for companies to rip us off and give us s#!t coverage that we're still liable for high deductibles that most people cant afford anyways.  I know I'd rather not go to a doctor because I know it'll cost an arm and a leg out of pocket, even on an employer plan.  We're basically at a point where our money would be better spent to break us out of this system, where we aren't liable for portions of medical bills or fearful of the financial ruin having to pay a deductible might cause let alone maybe having to hit an out of pocket maximum for something major, where we aren't tied to a crappy job because we'll lose our health care through our employer, and a million other reasons.  But it won't happen because most of America's "f#&% you, I don't want MY MONEY to pay for you!" attitude towards things.  It's a shame.

Edit: obviously these are really rough estimates.

 
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VectorVictor said:
Whoa, Trump wouldn't lie to us, the American public, would he?

And re: Bernie's plan, wasn't there going to be something like a $.05 tax on every stock trade that was going to foot the bill for this and other projects very easily?
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Here's some context for the stock/bond tax Bernie proposed: https://www.npr.org/2016/02/12/466465333/sanders-favors-a-speculation-tax-on-big-wall-street-firms-what-is-that

Sanders has proposed something he calls a speculation tax, a small levy on every stock, bond or derivative sold in the United States.

The revenue would go toward free tuition at public colleges and universities and would also be used to pare down student debt and pay for work-study programs, as well as other programs, Sanders says.
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The idea of a tax on financial transactions is anything but new. Over the years, versions of it have been proposed by economists John Maynard Keynes and James Tobin. The United States actually had such a tax until 1966, as do numerous countries today. The European Union is expected to impose one as soon as next year.

Under the Sanders proposal, trades would be taxed at a rate of 0.5 percent for stocks and 0.1 percent for bonds. A stock trade of $1,000 would thus incur a cost of $5.
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Pollin believes such a tax could raise as much as $340 billion a year over the next decade. But the Tax Policy Center said the potential revenue would be less than one-tenth of that.
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$34-340 billion is quite a large range, but given that estimates for free college tuition are about $60-80 billion, it seems doable. But not even close to enough to cover healthcare.

 
It would also have the secondary benefit of making high frequency trading less profitable.  Where firms buy access to be close to the exchanges so they can perform milliseconds of arbitrage to skim off the top of trades going through the system.

 
RedDenver said:
Here's some context for the stock/bond tax Bernie proposed: https://www.npr.org/2016/02/12/466465333/sanders-favors-a-speculation-tax-on-big-wall-street-firms-what-is-that

$34-340 billion is quite a large range, but given that estimates for free college tuition are about $60-80 billion, it seems doable. But not even close to enough to cover healthcare.
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Thanks--I couldn't remember for the life of me the particulars of what he had said. My Alzheimer's kicked in, I guess. 

And as far as the Trillions of dollars estimate re: Health Care, is that using the overly-inflated costs the hospitals and Doctor Offices give, or real world, practical amounts for services and treatment? 

 
funhusker said:
Sounds pricey on the surface.  And knowing people will cuss, there would have to be some sort of tax to offset the expense.  But I'm curious how much Americans spend as a whole on private medical coverage.  I'm guess close to that number if not more; I have homework for the day.

Depending on the numbers, my point is that I would rather pay an extra $500 in taxes to receive full coverage for my family versus paying $700 to a private company to hope they cover us.  If the US population is 300,000,000 that is only $106/year per person.  Seems kind of cheap.

EDIT:  I should have read the article first.  Mia Culpa!  Makes a hell of a difference!  They are talking 32 Trillion of 10 years, or 3.2 Trillion a year.  That is $10.60 a person.  Why aren't we doing this yesterday???  

"It would deliver significant savings on administration and drug costs, but increased demand for care would drive up spending, the analysis found."

^^^This quote from the article seems to say the study acknowledges there are a lot of people going without medical treatment that need it.  That's a problem that I don't feel the United States should have.
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Unfortunately, I think your math is a little off...

$3,200,000,000,000 ÷ 300,000,000 = $10,667 per person per year* (which is really closer to $9,756 per person per year since our population is closer to 328M)

But like @methodical said, we're currently spending around $3.4T per year on health care, so switching from the status quo to Bernie's plan would actually collectively save us around $200B per year, which equates into $610 per person per year. More coverage for less money? In theory, the vast majority of Americans should be on board with this idea. But we all know that's not going to happen... 

 
schriznoeder said:
Unfortunately, I think your math is a little off...

$3,200,000,000,000 ÷ 300,000,000 = $10,667 per person per year* (which is really closer to $9,756 per person per year since our population is closer to 328M)

But like @methodical said, we're currently spending around $3.4T per year on health care, so switching from the status quo to Bernie's plan would actually collectively save us around $200B per year, which equates into $610 per person per year. More coverage for less money? In theory, the vast majority of Americans should be on board with this idea. But we all know that's not going to happen... 
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Fiscal conservatives should favor this plan. I've convinced a few that it's worth taking a deeper look into at least.

 
BigRedBuster said:
This really is incredible. Especially at a time when Trump is attacking the Koch brothers. 
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Blahous’s paper, titled “The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System,” estimates total national health expenditures. Even though his cost-saving estimates are more conservative than others, he acknowledges that Sanders’s “Medicare for All” plan would yield a $482 billion reduction in health care spending, and over $1.5 trillion in administrative savings, for a total of $2 trillion less in overall health care expenditures between 2022 and 2031, compared to current spending.
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In a written analysis shared with The Intercept, Himmelstein and Woolhandler write that Blahous’s report undercounts administrative savings by more than $8.3 trillion over 10 years. Taking those savings into account would lower Blahous’s estimate from $32.6 trillion to $24.3 trillion.
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So Bernie's Medicare-for-All plan would save $2-10 trillion over ten years. That's trillion. (Also keep in mind that the plan Bernie proposed was way better than most healthcare now and included things like vision and dental.)

And if we negotiate drug prices like the VA and Europe do, we'd save an additional $1.7 trillion for a total savings of $3.7-11.7 trillion over a decade:

Additionally, the policy experts believe that Blahous underestimates savings from drug prices; for example, ignoring the success the U.S. Veterans Administration, the Canadian government, and certain European governments have had in negotiating for lower drug prices. If the United States paid European prices, they conclude, another $1.7 trillion would be trimmed from Blahous’s total cost estimate, bringing it down to $22.6 trillion over 10 years.
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As mentioned, I'm currently navigating health insurance for my family. Recently received an email, generated from my search history, offering me "Trumpcare" that takes advantage of recent changes to ACA coverage. More than just curious, I look into it, and by God the plan really would be a lifesaver. "Trumpcare" would easily save us $1,000 a month and wouldn't fluctuate with changes in our income, like Obamacare. Basically it allows families and individuals without pre-existing conditions to purchase much lower-cost healthcare because we are more likely to be less-expensive customers.

It seems like a reasonable adjustment to Obamacare. Maybe I was too quick to judge anything trumpeting Trumpcare. I go to my insurance broker, who gets a cut of everything. He fills me in.

"Trumpcare" isn't new at all. It's an insurance system called MultiPlan that's been around for 40 years. It negotiates cut-rate deals by hiding a lot of cut-rate benefits. Most patients don't realize how little it covers until it's too late. But dressed up as Trumpcare and aimed at people without pre-existing conditions, it pulls the healthy people out of Obamacare and sabotages the actuarial math that makes the ACA possible.

It's a poison pill in more ways than one. My agent says he will not sell MultiPlan by any name, because he wouldn't be able to sleep at night. 

 
Big Red 40 said:
I've had a feeling ever since its inception, that there were many behind the scenes forces sabotaging the ACA, but I guess now its Ok to do it right out in the open. Sheesh 

 https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/10/17/16489526/take-care-clause-obamacare-trump-sabotage-aca-illegal-cities-sue
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Trump started with it right from the beginning with (if I’m recalling correctly) not doing the advertising that was requires by the law. 

Also, the GOP has been trying to defund it or make parts of it illegal since its inception.

Before its inception they ruined an important part of it (again my memory is foggy since it was years ago I looked into it) which was to require states to help cover those between the 100% and 130% poverty line. Federal taxes were going to pay a huge majority for it. It ended up being a choice and almost all Republican states refused it just to make the ACA seem worse than it was.

I once calculated the cost for Nebraska and I believe remember that it would have cost us around 10 cents per person per year.

Main reason I remember this is because I was under 130% and above 100% for a couple years when I was in college so I didn’t meet the below poverty threshhold and Nebraska was stupid and didn’t do this part of the ACA.

 
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